RETURN TO ARIZONA

By Ken Kelly

It is a Friday morning. I am on vacation, and I am flying from Washington, DC to Arizona. The weather doesn’t get much better than Arizona in November. But I have more than that to look forward to: I am headed to an AWSDA convention. Last year’s convention, held at the same time at the same location, the Phoenix Hilton-East Mesa, was the best convention I have been to since I joined AWSDA in 1999. I am really looking forward to this.

AWSDA started life as the American Women’s Self Defense Association. It was founded by Liz Kennedy, who wanted to bring together leading experts in the field of self defense so that they could work together, brainstorm, train, share and learn together. Eighteen years later, it is going strong. It has grown so popular, not just in the United States but overseas, that this year it changed its name to the Association for Women’s Self Defense Advancement, in recognition of its worldwide membership.

I know I will be seeing good friends here, and when I get to the hotel, I run into Lance Dauby. We head to lunch at a barbeque restaurant within walking distance of the hotel, and I learn something disappointing: Alex MacMahon was injured in a training exercise, and would not be coming to the convention.

I met Alex at last year’s convention, and we have stayed in touch through email since. A career soldier in the British army, he had missed the previous year’s convention in Toronto when his unit got called to Iraq. He turned down a refund, and told AWSDA headquarters to give his spot as a scholarship to someone who would otherwise not be able to come. I had planned to take his class in Emergency Medicine this year. Get well, good friend.

Saturday morning we had the Rape Prevention Instructor course. Phil Messina, founder and president of Modern Warrior, designed this course back in the 1980s when there was a serial rapist on a crime spree on Long Island, NY. Phil subsequently donated the course to AWSDA, and has run every instructor certification course since then. In the room I see plenty of familiar faces, and a bunch of new ones. I am paired with a young couple from California attending their first AWSDA convention. That night I have dinner with more friends, old and new.

Sunday is a free day to do what you want. Jon and Judy Eckert, of Crown Gym Mats, their friends Katerina and Blair, who live in the Phoenix area, and Shannon Montalbano, a Modern Warrior student who assisted Phil in teaching yesterday’s Rape Prevention Instructor class, took me up on my offer to go shooting. But first, we gathered in my hotel room for a few hours of handgun safety and shooting instruction. From there, it is off to lunch, and then to the range recommended by Susan Baldwin. All the new shooters made me proud.

Back at the hotel bar after the range where we chatted with other seminar participants, then I headed to the instructor’s meeting. After that, there was a reception right outside by the pool, where I had dinner with more friends from past conventions. From there we headed upstairs to the AWSDA hospitality suite to continue socializing.

Monday morning the convention was back in full swing. We started with an opening meeting, where instructors made their introductions and described their classes. There are typically at least three classes going on at one time, and four on the day that there are live firearm classes. Because each class is usually repeated only once, you can never take more than 2/3 of the classes. I had planned on taking Alex MacMahon’s class in the first session, but in his absence, I took Mike Bellows class, “Use of Force Options.” The class was an overview of your choices in dealing with violent attackers, starting with unarmed response, through a variety of less lethal options, including Taser, and finally firearms. The exhibitors from Taser came in to demonstrate their product.

After lunch I took Sheila Haddad’s course on “Scary Pins.” This class covered in detail a topic addressed in the Rape Prevention class: when a woman awakens to find an attacker trying to assault her in her own bed. The class covered a variety of different attacks and their counters, which we all tried out on the training mats. I admired how Sheila dealt tastefully with such a delicate topic. I returned to the same room after the break for Kevin Dillon’s “Overcoming Size Differences” class. His excellent presentation was well received, and again, we all got to participate in hands-on training.

I changed my clothes, and headed to the group dinner and membership meeting. Another friend and teacher from previous seminars, George Harris of Sigarms Academy in New Hampshire, was at my table. This year American Handgunner magazine had an article about this excellent instructor.

Tuesday morning we started early. I chose Chip Slade’s class, “Dangerous Territory,” which also dealt with the topic of dealing with an attacker who is on top of you. Chip began his class by telling us all how much he is bothered by women being victimized, and why he has devoted his time and energy to trying to stop it. It made me think about my mother, and her sisters, victims of violent crime, and about a dear friend who faced sexual harassment as a student, and why I take such pleasure in doing something to keep those things from happening to others.

At last year’s convention Martin Smith, a police officer from Nottingham, England (no, he is not the Sheriff of Nottingham, but we call him that anyway) started his class, the first session of the day, with a hilarious warm up. In that same room, Larry Schwarz in the second session and Chip Slade in the third session started their classes with the exact same warm up, both crediting Martin. This year Chip again adapted this warm up, which had people line up in two rows facing each other, then run across the room to do bows, high fives, and other techniques. As in Sheila’s class, we had a vigorous workout while learning valuable techniques. After the break I headed to Dan Kessler’s “Advanced Verbal Self Defense,” where we covered in detail a subject Dan had addressed in his article in the Summer 2007 issue of The Fisted Rose.

We had lunch by poolside. I sat with Robin Ball, a firearms instructor from Washington State, who had gone to the Mesa Police Department range to observe George Harris’ beginner level handgun class. She would return to the range for the intermediate level class in the afternoon.

After lunch, I taught my own class, “The Aftermath of Deadly Force Encounters.” I was thrilled with my evaluations, as well as those from the class I taught on Wednesday, which was to be the second greatest thrill for me at the convention.

We broke early that afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to have dinner with friends in Phoenix that evening. I returned to the hotel, and found a bunch of folks headed to the pool and hot tub, so I hurried up to my room, changed into my swimsuit, and joined them.

I had planned on taking Mesa Police Officer Roy Dunkelbarger’s class “Get Your Head in the Game” on Wednesday morning. However, he had to meet with his chief, so I switched time slots with him. Since I had planned to take his class anyway, this was not a problem for me.

One great advantage of AWSDA is that so many police officers are members. In both sessions of my class, officers were able to offer their experience and insight, and so contributed greatly to the learning experience, for me as well as the students. One of these officers was U.S. Deputy Marshall Alan Reed, whose class, “Deadly Force Decision Making,” I attended next. Alan’s class was role play for concealed carry permit holders. More than half of the population of the U.S. lives in states where residents who meet the necessary qualifications can get a permit to carry a concealed handgun. We each took turns being “on the spot.” The person on the spot went outside the room, while Alan and his wife Andrea set up the scenario, and briefed the other participants. Alan then went outside and briefed the person on the spot, who then came into the room and reacted to the scenario. I went up first. I was told that I was returning home after dark, my “wife” was suffering from an illness, and so was sleeping in another room. I entered the room to find it dark. Chairs had been arranged on the mat to represent various rooms in the house. I went to my “bedroom,” and heard two home invaders. I took them at gunpoint. When the lights came on my “wife” came into the room, and I warned her to stay away from the home invaders, to call 911, and told her to describe me to the emergency operator. She said I was 5’10”, 160 lbs., and balding. I told her afterwards that I would love to be 160 lbs. She apologized for describing me as balding, but I assured her that I started losing my hair with puberty, so I had plenty of decades to accept my hair loss. (Yes, that someone could think I only weigh 160 lbs. was the high spot of the convention for me; I am sure she would have had a higher estimate if she had seen me in the pool the night before). We proceeded with other scenarios, and we all got to play those on the spot and those giving their fellow students a challenge.

After lunch I got to take Roy’s class. I had taken it last year, and was eager to take it again. It dealt with the power of the subconscious mind. One thing that really hit home for me was his excellent criticism of instructors who tell students in role play training that they were killed. Less than a quarter of people shot with handguns die. I had participated in a training class earlier in the year in which I had been shot in the arm with a paint pellet. The instructor told me that I had been “killed” and that I should lie on the ground. Just what lessons are you planting in the student’s subconscious mind with that? I talked to another student in that same training class who was also told that he had been “killed,” and he was visibly depressed by it. I told him that at Modern Warrior they never have a student leave a training scenario with a defeat, and for good reason. There is also a reason that Rape Prevention Instructors are taught to “end on a good one” when they work one-on-one with students.

That night we had a barbeque dinner poolside, and distributed prizes.

There were excellent courses that I had to miss. However, I have had the opportunity to train in Phil Messina’s knife defense system at his school, Modern Warrior, in New York, and will take his two day course in edged weapons defense at the end of February. In 2004 I took George Harris’ intermediate handgun class at the Asheville, NC convention. I took Deanna Ennis’ class when she gave it in Toronto in 2005. I was not able to take Larry Schwarz’s class this year, which is a shame because I enjoyed taking the class he gave last year. I had planned on taking Sonya Ottaway’s class on nutrition and fitness, but a scheduling change kept me from doing so.

At last year’s convention Col. Dave Grossman talked about something he has been writing about for some time - the sheep, the wolves, and the sheep dogs. Most people are good, law abiding people who, by their work, serve their fellow man. They do not seek to harm anyone else; they are the sheep. There are predators in society who view their honest fellow citizens as a resource to be harvested and as people to be victimized. By doing so, these predators attempt to live without having to work and earn an honest living. These are the wolves. Then there are the sheep dogs – those who make it their job to stand up to the wolves, and to protect the sheep.

Clearly, those who have made it their careers to be law enforcement officers are sheep dogs. They have taken an oath to risk their own lives and limbs to protect people they do not know from the wolves. They too are predators, but do not prey on the sheep.

I love this analogy, but I have always wondered about the role of those of us who have not chosen to be sworn officers, but have also chosen not to be victims. We know that the only thing that a predator fears is another predator, so we have become predators, capable of protecting ourselves from the wolves.

In his class, Alan Reed pointed out that there are two types of sheep dogs. There are those like the German shepherd, which not only protect the flock from wolves, but who look like wolves themselves. Then there are the breeds of sheepdogs like the English sheepdogs, who, from a distance, look a lot like sheep. I realized this was the analogy I was searching for.

At AWSDA, I got to spend my time with fellow sheep dogs. Some, the women and men who choose to protect their fellow man, were of the German shepherd variety, and some were of the English sheep dog variety - ordinary citizens who have prepared for violent criminal attack. What we have in common is that we choose not to be prey, and will make any wolf who wants to make us so realize that he has made a serious mistake in prey selection.

Sheep do not like sheep dogs. Remember the movie Babe, the story of the little pig who wanted to be a sheep dog. What was it that the sheep called the sheep dogs? Wolves. We English sheep dogs spend much of our lives living among the sheep, who are uncomfortable with our canine teeth, and our un-sheep like attitude. For a few days, I got to train with women and men who think like I do, and have prepared themselves accordingly.

Since coming home, I have continued to stay in contact with the new friends I made this year, as well as the ones I made at previous seminars. Among these new friends was the young couple from California that I met on Saturday during the Rape Prevention Instructor course. They wrote me that they both had “extreme left” upbringings, and so had misconceptions about firearms owners. They went on to write that after meeting me and taking George Harris’ class they came home with a completely different view. [Editor’s note: This is an example of what the essence of AWSDA is: new experiences, education, an opening of people’s eyes, ears and minds.]

Fortunately, I will only have to wait eight months till the next convention, in Greenville, SC in August of 2008. I hope to see you there.